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Drought ends as Baelum blushes

In many ways, football is a simple game: the team that scores
the most goals, wins. Yet in every week, in every league and in
every single match, there are intriguing statistical sub-plots that
help make the beautiful game the fascinating spectacle that it
is.

That's why, every week, we at
FIFA.com take a look at the numbers behind the
results, highlighting football's biggest winners and losers
from the week just past. In this, the latest of our regular
round-ups, we explain why the past week has brought relief for
Lukas Podolski, delight for Rangers, and despair for Club Brugge
and Thomas Baelum.

384 days had passed since Lukas Podolski's last
Bundesliga goal when the Bayern Munich star finally ended his
scoring drought on Saturday. The former FC Koln striker, voted Best
Young Player at the 2006 FIFA World Cup™, had gone 21 goalless
matches since netting on 11 March 2007 in a 1-1 draw against Werder
Bremen, and his return to scoring form helped a below-par Bayern
side claim an identical scoreline away to Nuremberg. Podolski, who
last week declared himself "fed up with the Bayern subs'
bench," once again made his entrance as a substitute,
replacing Miroslav Klose, and his drought-ending equaliser was not
the game's only statistic worth reflecting on. After all, by
starting between the sticks, Oliver Kahn made his 552nd Bundesliga
appearance, taking him level with former Werder and Schalke
defender Klaus Fichtel as the third-most experienced player in the
history of the German top flight.

87 days shy of his 40th birthday, Paolo Maldini,
another of football's modern day legends, became the week's
oldest goalscorer when he headed home against Atalanta at the San
Siro. Unfortunately for the AC Milan captain, his attempt to lead
by example proved insufficient to prevent the
Rossoneri slumping to a 2-1 home defeat in which Andrea
Pirlo missed a penalty and Alessandro Nesta saw red. At the other
end of the age spectrum, meanwhile, Bojan Krkic was the youngest
goalscorer for the second week in succession, although the
youngster shared Maldini's misery as his Barcelona side
conceded a two-goal lead to go down 3-2 at Real Betis.

27 years ago, on 3 May 1981, Club Brugge were beaten
5-1 at home by Anderlecht. In the time since, no team has managed
to claim such a resounding victory at the Jan Breydel Stadium -
until Sunday. Mid-table Racing Genk were the team to rewrite
history, inflicting a crushing 6-2 defeat on their hosts and
dealing another savage blow to the Brugges outfit's faltering
bid for the Jupiler League title. While leaders Standard Liege
extended to 28 matches their remarkable unbeaten run with a 1-0 win
at Mechelen, Club Brugge slipped back to third, one point behind
Anderlecht and ten adrift of the seemingly unstoppable
Standard.

26 minutes was all it took for Deportivo La
Coruna's Xisco to put Real Murcia to the sword with the
week's fastest hat-trick. Enrique De Lucas had given Murcia the
lead inside the opening two minutes but Deportivo's 21-year-old
striker led their comeback with an equaliser on 23 minutes and had
rounded off his hat-trick, and a 3-1 win, within three minutes of
the second half kicking off. Other hat-trick heroes included
Brann's Thorstein Helstad, Kostadin Hazurov of Bulgaria's
Vidima-Rakovski and Veracruz's Claudio Graf, while special
mention should go Ivan Cvetkov and Jan Novak, both of whom scored
four in identical 4-0 wins for their respective clubs, Sivasspor
and MFK Kosice.

13 this week proved unlucky for those chasing the
leaders in Scotland, Georgia and Egypt, where Rangers, WIT Georgia
Tbilisi and Al Ahly all extended their winning streaks. Of the
victories that stretched these unblemished sequences to 13, the
most significant came at Glasgow's Ibrox Stadium, where Rangers
moved six points clear of arch-rivals Celtic with a narrow 1-0 win
in a typically fraught and hard-fought Old Firm derby. With Walter
Smith's side also holding a game in hand over the reigning
champions, a 52nd Scottish league title for the blue half of
Glasgow would appear closer than ever.

3 goals have been scored this season by Willem
II's Thomas Baelum. Not a bad return for a defender, one might
think, but this statistic becomes considerably less laudable when
it is discovered that all three have come at the wrong end. By
beating his own keeper once again in a 2-2 draw at Sparta Rotterdam
on Sunday, the 29-year-old Dane became the first Eredivisie player
to reach this unwanted landmark in 30 years. Those three decades
have seen no fewer than 28 players, including the likes of Ajax
legend Danny Blind, score two own goals in a single season, but
Baelum can now lay claim to the dubious distinction of being the
most unlucky player in the history of the Dutch top flight.